Written By Srimathi Mani on Monday, March 28, 2011 | 5:03 PM

Black Forest Cake (BFC) is the most sought after cake among my nieces and nephews.In the past I have baked them the cake for their birthdays or otherwise. It was my nephew's11th birthday last week. I called him to wish him a happy birthday and asked him what he would like for his birthday. As usual, he said that he would love the black forest cake. Recently it was found that he was allergic to gluten and apart from that he had to stay away from sugar, yeast or anything that increased candida in the body. So making this cake with regular flour or sugar was out of the picture. I felt a little sad that I could not make him the cake. But then I remembered watching a cooking show where they made mini cakes with no flour.Using the recipe from the cooking show I decided to make him the cake. The recipe required honey which I could not use.. I was looking for a sugar substitutes and was informed that Xylitol was great for people with candida as mentioned here. So using xylitol in the recipe I was able to come up with a perfect flour less and sugar less birthday cake.

Judgement: I loved the cake. Without the icing it tasted like a brownie. With the whipped cream topping it tasted pretty good. It was dense but moist and had a pie/ ice cream cake like feel. For all those who have diet challenges here is one from my kitchen.